Filter housings are widely used in a variety of applications in the pharmaceutical, food, fine chemical and water purity industries to filter or purify fluids. Processing pressures may typically range from less than 10 p.s.i. to approximately 1000 p.s.i., depending on the specific product being filtered. Traditionally, a filter housing includes a base assembly with a deep collection chamber, a cartridge plate with a plurality of longitudinal filter cartridges attached thereto, and a dome which fits over the top of the entire filter housing (see generally, FIG. 1). These elements are typically sealed against each other using a plurality of O-rings or other gasket-type sealing devices. A plurality of bolt assemblies are then used to compress the filter housing dome against the base assembly, thereby squeezing the two O-rings against the intermediate cartridge plate.
This prior art design suffers from a variety of potential and actual problems. The prior art design contains an unacceptable number of constituent elements included in the filter housing. Many of these elements must be removed and cleaned separately after every production run, and the junctions or joints between each of these elements create areas that may include tiny crevices and cracks which may promote bacterial growth.
Additionally, there are many horizontal surfaces in typical prior designs which promote the collection or “pooling” of both unfiltered product (on the upper face of the cartridge plate) and filtered product (on the lower face of the collection chamber). This pooling wastes both unfiltered and filtered product, and may promote bacterial growth. Also, certain pooled product may be toxic or otherwise harmful which may endanger the safety of an operator during filter housing assembly and disassembly.
Finally, the orientation of the various elements of the prior art filter housings limit the ability to use an automated cleaning system, such as Clean-In-Place (CIP) technology. Automated cleaning of these prior art systems may necessitate the use of specialized additional adapters. Manual cleaning increases the time between production cycles, requires valuable manpower, and reduces the overall efficiency of the filtering system. Additionally, automated cleaning techniques may be more repeatable and accurate than manual systems, and may further be safer for operators when volatile chemicals are used in the cleaning process.